Classical music can be a mystery. While anyone can appreciate the beautiful sounds made by an orchestra, it often takes some deeper knowledge to grasp the intricacies that lead to a deeper and fuller experience.

Starting this week, the Loveland Orchestra is giving its community a chance to develop some of the latter before its concerts at informational presentations that will be held the week before each concert.

Those free discussions, which the orchestra is billing "TLO Talks" will take place at 2 p.m. on the Sunday before an orchestra concert in the Gertrude Scott Meeting Room of the Loveland Public Library.

Dr. Elizabet de Vallée, a member of the orchestra with a background in music education, will give the first presentation on Sunday ahead of the orchestra's Halloween-themed concert on Oct. 26.

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"The talks are meant to tell the public more about the music that the Loveland Orchestra will play including if there is a story the music is trying to tell," said de Vallée. "They will also provide information about the composers and the time in which they lived."

She said her talk, which will cover the five pieces that will make up the Halloween concert, will be focused on how the composers communicated certain macabre ideas through their compositions.

"There's a sound in one of them that's the sound of a guillotine falling so we will talk about that and what else to listen for, " she said. "We'll talk about how there is actually a kind of music that composers would write if they wanted to depict something demonic or they wanted to depict something that's angelic."

De Vallée said such music education has always been a priority for the orchestra with conductor Luciano Silvestri Jr. typically giving a 20-minute educational talk prior to each concert. However, those talks, which he will continue to give, provide a much more limited look at the pieces and composers than what "TLO Talks" will now provide.

"In the Halloween program, for example, we are doing five pieces and to cover five pieces in 20 minutes means four minutes per piece at most," she said. "An hour gives you a lot more time."

De Vallée said the talks will be given by Silvestri and members of the orchestra as well as musicologists from the community. She said they will typically consist of a mix of YouTube clips, Powerpoint presentations, live demonstrations and other elements as well as a question-and-answer session.

"We hope that people who attend talks will go to the concerts and that they talks will also wet their appetite for more orchestra music in general," she said.

The Oct. 26 Halloween concert will consist of selections by Bach, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, Brahms and Berlioz. Several of them will be recognizable from scary movies. An all-ages costume contest will take place before the concert.

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